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TL;DR - Sorry for the length. Read the bold subtitles to catch the gist.
It would appear that Schine is of the opinion that the existing build system needs a wholesale revamp. I have outlined my objections to that necessity elsewhere and shall not belabor the point here. This post will be my delineation of how I would approach such a redesign were I the one doing it. Hopefully this will be of some use to Schine.
The Problems to be Addressed
All Quantity, No Quality. Victory goes to the one who fields the most blocks. Assuming two player of equal building and fighting skill, building for PvP, the game pretty much boils down to whomever is bringing the most blocks to the fight. That could be a server breaking titan, or a server breaking sized fleet, but it is always as many blocks as possible and it inevitably strains or breaks a server.
There is never an incentive to bring less blocks to a fight. There is always incentive to bring more blocks to a fight.
RP versus PvP. Currently there is a severe mismatch between ships that are built for PvP and those that are built for RP. With a few notable exceptions, the vast majority of RP ships are severely hampered in their ability to compete with a similarly massed ship devoted to PvP. There currently exists little to no incentive for a PvP ship to have any sort of interior devoted to crew space. It is also the case that the extra mass of greebling and the odd shapes that can oft times make a ship more visually unique are for the most part net losses to a ship if focused on PvP.
Unintuitive Mechanics. Some current systems make little to no sense with regard to how people understand things aught to work. Chief among these is the existing power system which is so un-intuitive, it often takes weeks or months for new players to even start having a clue. Any redesign should create systems that at least are not at odds with how people's intuition would understand things.
Things to Do First
Vast man hours have been spent thus far by a large number of people building assets for the game. Most of these are used by players but much, such as the fleet competitions, are meant to be used by the game itself. Any wholesale redesign of the build system must come after additional tools have been added to facilitate the wholesale rebuilding that will necessarily follow. Chief among these extra tools should be something like:
'Fill Available Space' would fill a contained empty space with the selected block type. 'Hide All But' would make it very easy to remove unwanted blocks. 'Hollow Ship' would remove all blocks except those exposed to exterior space. 'Hollow Ship Interior' would remove all blocks that are surrounded on all faces by other blocks, so as to leave intact any interior architecture.
Crew & Quarters
This is THE solution to the PvP versus RP problem. If a ship with crew and quarters is qualitatively superior to a ship built without, then RP ships will suffer no handicap other than the builders possible skill. Crew and quarters is already planned for inclusion into the game. Little more needs to be said. Consult the brainstorm thread for more.
Addressing Quantity Versus Quality
Quality tiers need to be added for a good many blocks. Higher quality blocks should be manufacturable at a rate of ten to one. Put ten basic 'first tier' shield capacitors into a special factory so as to get one 'second tier' shield capacitor that is twice as effective as a 'first tier'. Put ten 'second tier' shield capacitors into that factory and get one 'third tier' shield capacitor with twice the capacity of a 'second tier'. Yes, this does mean that it will take one hundred times the material to get a block that is only four times as good, but it needs to be that extreme to maintain balance.
Many blocks could be upgradeable this way including, shield regenerators, thrusters, power modules, power capacitors, weapon and effect systems, etc.. The end result is that many players might well decide that the resources that would otherwise be spent on a 500K mass titan would be better spent on a third tier 5K mass light cruiser that would be a lot more fun to fly. That ship wouldn't be able to defeat a titan, not even close, but it would literally fly rings around most ships many times it's mass. Unless of course those ships were built similarly, or with even second tier gear.
If someone were able to collect one hundred times the resources needed for a 500K mass titan and use it all to build a single, third tier titan, then I dare say they deserve their domination.
Addressing Power (Keep power, but add heat.)
Concurrent with adding quality tiers would be creating three slightly different power systems. First tier power systems would require no special placement of power blocks. They are essentially fuel cells that can go anywhere. They burn fuel, which is easily processed from abundant minerals. The fuel does get burned up and requires replenishment. Due to their low power density and dispersed structure, they do not generate significant waste heat. These would be extremely easy for new players to use. Such fuel could potentially explode if struck by weapon fire.
Second tier power systems are fusion systems. They also require fuel but it is a special fuel manufactured from shards. (Pick a couple of shards that are not often used for critical blocks.) This fuel is burned at only 10% of the rate as regular fuel. Such fuel could potentially 'not' explode. Fusion power systems need to be surrounded by one layer of advanced armor, creating the incentive to concentrate them in contiguous blocks. They generate significant waste heat which must be dealt with.
Third tier power systems are zero point energy devices that pull power from the quantum field. They require no fuel. They do require two layers of advanced armor surrounding them however and they generate even more heat than fusion systems.
Thrust and Fuel
Keeping with the tiered quality, the three tiers of thrust would require the same sort of fuel as the same tiered power systems. A first tier thruster would be a chemical drive of some sort and need the same fuel as a first tier power plant, and would obviously burn such fuel to create thrust. A second tier thruster would be a fusion drive and use the same fuel as the second tier fusion power plant. A third tier thruster is a reactionless drive that requires no fuel.
Dealing with Heat
A ship/station would have a degree of heat tolerance depending upon it's total mass, heavier ships can handle more heat. Heat gets radiated away from a ship depending upon the total quantity of hull or armor blocks exposed to exterior space. Due to the way the surface area to volume ratio works, this will advantage smaller ships. Larger heavier ships might be able to tolerate more heat, but smaller ships can radiate it away faster.
I caution against making the heat radiation effect dependant upon the number of block facings exposed to exterior space. The idea is to reward textured surfaces and non-blocky shapes, not to force a particular design aesthetic that would necessarily result from such a mechanic. Heat radiation will already induce the creation of ships with long fins.
This will with one blow spell the end of monotonously constructed doom cubes. The logic of doom cubes is to maximize volume to surface area. The need to disperse heat would require maximizing surface area to volume. This will also reward players who make the effort to greeble their ships.
We could optionally add heat radiator fins which would disperse heat much more rapidly than basic hull or armor. The danger with this is that it will create an incentive to cover an entire hull with such radiators. I do not off hand have a solution for this other than to not include such fins and allow players to improvise something similar using regular hull blocks.
Possibly a heat sink block could be added that is on the order of ten times more effective at containing heat as would be the mass of an advanced armor block.
Very optionally, a third or even forth tier block could be added that would be a dimensional heat shunt block, that dumps waste heat into some other dimension at a decent rate, allowing high heat ships to be built that are not reliant upon large fin structures.
Power, Heat and Fuel Conduits.
For added complexity, and potentially greater strategy in building, we could consider adding conduits for power, heat and fuel. I feel however that this would greatly complicate building and probably be too much for all but the hardest core builders, and so I do not suggest requiring it. Rather if included, such conduits should simply confer a small bonus if properly used. If the conduit is severed due to battle damage, the bonus could potentially be lost (if that is not otherwise taxing on the combat resolution).
Ammunition
While it is tempting to consider ammunition for things like cannons and missiles, we need to be careful of allowing similarly sized ships from being able to kill an opponent with a single alpha strike. The current architecture using capacitors is currently well balanced to prevent this and I would be leery of messing with that. The current weapon systems work sufficiently well as to be kept. The desire of some players to be able to field smaller weapons that can still do their jobs can be met using the tiered quality system.
Cloaking, Jamming and Scanners
A tiered block system would allow cloak ships to be built that are much more capable than current cloak ships, both by virtue of higher power generation and lower mass for their given capacities. The systems we have in place for cloaking, jamming and scanners would have to be tweaked.
I would recommend not having any extra tiers for cloaking and jamming as they are entirely dependant upon power usage. Scanners however would be able to benefit from higher tiers. Scanners should have two functions, their current active function of revealing system maps and shutting down cloaks and jammers, and a new passive ability for scanners that is able to see a cloaked or jammed ship if the scanner ability is high enough, and the heat times mass of the cloaked/jammed ship is high enough.
A low mass, low heat cloaked ship should essentially remain undetectable unless a scanner does an active pulse. But versus a large enough (or large multiplied by higher tier capacity) scanner even while passive, should be able to detect a large enough cloaked ship that is outputting any substantial heat.
A Complete Aside:
Torpedoes could use some love. We need warheads that do not clip inside hulls, that do not ignore armor, but do substantially more damage. We also need to cause any ship firing a torpedo to automatically de-cloak. We need an automatic de-cloak if a cloaked ship gets too close. And finally we need a couple of extra AI settings, one to favor firing at torpedo armed entities, and another to automatically declare enemy to any ship firing torpedoes that target the player or otherwise ramming with a torpedo warhead.
It would appear that Schine is of the opinion that the existing build system needs a wholesale revamp. I have outlined my objections to that necessity elsewhere and shall not belabor the point here. This post will be my delineation of how I would approach such a redesign were I the one doing it. Hopefully this will be of some use to Schine.
The Problems to be Addressed
All Quantity, No Quality. Victory goes to the one who fields the most blocks. Assuming two player of equal building and fighting skill, building for PvP, the game pretty much boils down to whomever is bringing the most blocks to the fight. That could be a server breaking titan, or a server breaking sized fleet, but it is always as many blocks as possible and it inevitably strains or breaks a server.
There is never an incentive to bring less blocks to a fight. There is always incentive to bring more blocks to a fight.
RP versus PvP. Currently there is a severe mismatch between ships that are built for PvP and those that are built for RP. With a few notable exceptions, the vast majority of RP ships are severely hampered in their ability to compete with a similarly massed ship devoted to PvP. There currently exists little to no incentive for a PvP ship to have any sort of interior devoted to crew space. It is also the case that the extra mass of greebling and the odd shapes that can oft times make a ship more visually unique are for the most part net losses to a ship if focused on PvP.
Unintuitive Mechanics. Some current systems make little to no sense with regard to how people understand things aught to work. Chief among these is the existing power system which is so un-intuitive, it often takes weeks or months for new players to even start having a clue. Any redesign should create systems that at least are not at odds with how people's intuition would understand things.
Things to Do First
Vast man hours have been spent thus far by a large number of people building assets for the game. Most of these are used by players but much, such as the fleet competitions, are meant to be used by the game itself. Any wholesale redesign of the build system must come after additional tools have been added to facilitate the wholesale rebuilding that will necessarily follow. Chief among these extra tools should be something like:
'Fill Available Space' would fill a contained empty space with the selected block type. 'Hide All But' would make it very easy to remove unwanted blocks. 'Hollow Ship' would remove all blocks except those exposed to exterior space. 'Hollow Ship Interior' would remove all blocks that are surrounded on all faces by other blocks, so as to leave intact any interior architecture.
Crew & Quarters
This is THE solution to the PvP versus RP problem. If a ship with crew and quarters is qualitatively superior to a ship built without, then RP ships will suffer no handicap other than the builders possible skill. Crew and quarters is already planned for inclusion into the game. Little more needs to be said. Consult the brainstorm thread for more.
Addressing Quantity Versus Quality
Quality tiers need to be added for a good many blocks. Higher quality blocks should be manufacturable at a rate of ten to one. Put ten basic 'first tier' shield capacitors into a special factory so as to get one 'second tier' shield capacitor that is twice as effective as a 'first tier'. Put ten 'second tier' shield capacitors into that factory and get one 'third tier' shield capacitor with twice the capacity of a 'second tier'. Yes, this does mean that it will take one hundred times the material to get a block that is only four times as good, but it needs to be that extreme to maintain balance.
Many blocks could be upgradeable this way including, shield regenerators, thrusters, power modules, power capacitors, weapon and effect systems, etc.. The end result is that many players might well decide that the resources that would otherwise be spent on a 500K mass titan would be better spent on a third tier 5K mass light cruiser that would be a lot more fun to fly. That ship wouldn't be able to defeat a titan, not even close, but it would literally fly rings around most ships many times it's mass. Unless of course those ships were built similarly, or with even second tier gear.
If someone were able to collect one hundred times the resources needed for a 500K mass titan and use it all to build a single, third tier titan, then I dare say they deserve their domination.
Addressing Power (Keep power, but add heat.)
Concurrent with adding quality tiers would be creating three slightly different power systems. First tier power systems would require no special placement of power blocks. They are essentially fuel cells that can go anywhere. They burn fuel, which is easily processed from abundant minerals. The fuel does get burned up and requires replenishment. Due to their low power density and dispersed structure, they do not generate significant waste heat. These would be extremely easy for new players to use. Such fuel could potentially explode if struck by weapon fire.
Second tier power systems are fusion systems. They also require fuel but it is a special fuel manufactured from shards. (Pick a couple of shards that are not often used for critical blocks.) This fuel is burned at only 10% of the rate as regular fuel. Such fuel could potentially 'not' explode. Fusion power systems need to be surrounded by one layer of advanced armor, creating the incentive to concentrate them in contiguous blocks. They generate significant waste heat which must be dealt with.
Third tier power systems are zero point energy devices that pull power from the quantum field. They require no fuel. They do require two layers of advanced armor surrounding them however and they generate even more heat than fusion systems.
Thrust and Fuel
Keeping with the tiered quality, the three tiers of thrust would require the same sort of fuel as the same tiered power systems. A first tier thruster would be a chemical drive of some sort and need the same fuel as a first tier power plant, and would obviously burn such fuel to create thrust. A second tier thruster would be a fusion drive and use the same fuel as the second tier fusion power plant. A third tier thruster is a reactionless drive that requires no fuel.
Dealing with Heat
A ship/station would have a degree of heat tolerance depending upon it's total mass, heavier ships can handle more heat. Heat gets radiated away from a ship depending upon the total quantity of hull or armor blocks exposed to exterior space. Due to the way the surface area to volume ratio works, this will advantage smaller ships. Larger heavier ships might be able to tolerate more heat, but smaller ships can radiate it away faster.
I caution against making the heat radiation effect dependant upon the number of block facings exposed to exterior space. The idea is to reward textured surfaces and non-blocky shapes, not to force a particular design aesthetic that would necessarily result from such a mechanic. Heat radiation will already induce the creation of ships with long fins.
This will with one blow spell the end of monotonously constructed doom cubes. The logic of doom cubes is to maximize volume to surface area. The need to disperse heat would require maximizing surface area to volume. This will also reward players who make the effort to greeble their ships.
We could optionally add heat radiator fins which would disperse heat much more rapidly than basic hull or armor. The danger with this is that it will create an incentive to cover an entire hull with such radiators. I do not off hand have a solution for this other than to not include such fins and allow players to improvise something similar using regular hull blocks.
Possibly a heat sink block could be added that is on the order of ten times more effective at containing heat as would be the mass of an advanced armor block.
Very optionally, a third or even forth tier block could be added that would be a dimensional heat shunt block, that dumps waste heat into some other dimension at a decent rate, allowing high heat ships to be built that are not reliant upon large fin structures.
Power, Heat and Fuel Conduits.
For added complexity, and potentially greater strategy in building, we could consider adding conduits for power, heat and fuel. I feel however that this would greatly complicate building and probably be too much for all but the hardest core builders, and so I do not suggest requiring it. Rather if included, such conduits should simply confer a small bonus if properly used. If the conduit is severed due to battle damage, the bonus could potentially be lost (if that is not otherwise taxing on the combat resolution).
Ammunition
While it is tempting to consider ammunition for things like cannons and missiles, we need to be careful of allowing similarly sized ships from being able to kill an opponent with a single alpha strike. The current architecture using capacitors is currently well balanced to prevent this and I would be leery of messing with that. The current weapon systems work sufficiently well as to be kept. The desire of some players to be able to field smaller weapons that can still do their jobs can be met using the tiered quality system.
Cloaking, Jamming and Scanners
A tiered block system would allow cloak ships to be built that are much more capable than current cloak ships, both by virtue of higher power generation and lower mass for their given capacities. The systems we have in place for cloaking, jamming and scanners would have to be tweaked.
I would recommend not having any extra tiers for cloaking and jamming as they are entirely dependant upon power usage. Scanners however would be able to benefit from higher tiers. Scanners should have two functions, their current active function of revealing system maps and shutting down cloaks and jammers, and a new passive ability for scanners that is able to see a cloaked or jammed ship if the scanner ability is high enough, and the heat times mass of the cloaked/jammed ship is high enough.
A low mass, low heat cloaked ship should essentially remain undetectable unless a scanner does an active pulse. But versus a large enough (or large multiplied by higher tier capacity) scanner even while passive, should be able to detect a large enough cloaked ship that is outputting any substantial heat.
A Complete Aside:
Torpedoes could use some love. We need warheads that do not clip inside hulls, that do not ignore armor, but do substantially more damage. We also need to cause any ship firing a torpedo to automatically de-cloak. We need an automatic de-cloak if a cloaked ship gets too close. And finally we need a couple of extra AI settings, one to favor firing at torpedo armed entities, and another to automatically declare enemy to any ship firing torpedoes that target the player or otherwise ramming with a torpedo warhead.
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